The Berkeley Reference is an awfully good DAC. It is an Awe filling DAC. Perhaps I was a bit hasty in saying it would be going up for sale soon. It is too good to put back on the block right away. I am in Chicago now and will be returning to Austin next week for the winter. The Berkeley will make the trip with me. I'd love to hear in in my much smaller listening room there. I think that it lives up to its billing as one of the best PCM DACS out there. It is a true reference DAC. Although you can't input DSD directly into the Berk there are ways around this by using JRiver Media center.
Back to the 760. I first heard it at RMAF. I said it was the best digital I have ever heard. I kept being drawn back to the room time and time again. It was so good I thought I was imagining things. One sign of how good it is, was when they would switch equipment that they were playing. Without singling out any other equipment specifically, I would notice when something else other than the 760 was playing the number of people in the room would start to thin out.
This is one of the larger rooms at RMAF. When the 760 was put back into the chain and a number of songs had been played I would notice that not only were all 15 chairs filled up there were a number of other people standing. Not everyone in the room knew what medium the songs were coming through. They just knew that they were hearing great music. The 760 was being feed with a Macbook Pro optimized with JRiver via a Nordost Heimdall USB cable playing redbook files. After hearing this I begged the distributor to send me that DAC. His response was that this was a prototype not for customers to home audtion. I begged and begged and he relented. I believe that the production units will be released before the end of the year. I have heard from the manufacturer that the production units sound significantly better than the prototype that had for home demo!
So the day comes that the Berk and the 760 arrive to my Chicago listening room. After playing the Berk over consecutive days I first start by comparing the Berk to the Soulution 541 SACD/DAC with network streaming that I already own. Via USB the SQ of both units are somewhat similar.
At this level of quality I'm not sure that there are any wrong choices just personal preferences. To my ears, overall the 541 is a few horse lengths ahead. It is not better by furlongs to the Berkley. The Ethernet connection is superior to USB. So it is not a totally fair fight because the Berkeley does not have a Network connection to stream from the computer or the NAS. The 541 has this built in. Another person might conclude that the Berk was horse lengths ahead. We all have different taste buds and hair cells in our ears.
Before I make further comments about just how much better the 760 is to either of these other two DACS, I hope to be able to hear a production unit of the 760 in Austin. This 760 is so much more expensive than the other two that it is going to be a "have gun will travel" unit for me. In other words when I move from one residence to the other the 760 would travel with me for the season. I expect to hear great results.
One other comment. In addition to have all of the other interfaces you would expect the 760 to have including Ethernet, it has an I2S connection on the back of the unit. I'm not exactly sure how this would work but it seems to be something that is built into it for the future.
Stay tuned.
